Anne Baxter

Although she never established a dominant screen persona, Anne Baxter proved a dedicated and reliable worker, making a string of good films that seldom showed her as other than intelligent and attractive. The polished performer began studying in earnest with Maria Ouspenskaya at age 11 and within two years made her debut on the Great White Way in "Seen But Not Heard" (1936). After several more Broadway turns, Hollywood beckoned. Baxter began her film career as the ingenue love interest in the above-average Western "Twenty Mule Team" (1940). A measure of just how impressive the actress was is that she was tested for the leading role of the second Mrs. de Winter in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (also 1940), but her youth precluded her casting. Instead, Baxter went on to offer a breakthrough performance as Joseph Cotten's sweet, wholesome daughter in Orson Welles' superior "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942). She was tapped top replace an ill Teresa Wright in the odd "The North Star" (1943), the Samuel Goldwyn-produced tribute to the USA's Russian allies. Baxter, playing a Ukrainian villager, managed to acquit herself in the proceedings which play more like propaganda than entertainment. Baxter was seen...

Although she never established a dominant screen persona, Anne Baxter proved a dedicated and reliable worker, making a string of good films that seldom showed her as other than intelligent and attractive. The polished performer began studying in earnest with Maria Ouspenskaya at age 11 and within two years made her debut on the Great White Way in "Seen But Not Heard" (1936). After several more Broadway turns, Hollywood beckoned. Baxter began her film career as the ingenue love interest in the above-average Western "Twenty Mule Team" (1940). A measure of just how impressive the actress was is that she was tested for the leading role of the second Mrs. de Winter in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (also 1940), but her youth precluded her casting. Instead, Baxter went on to offer a breakthrough performance as Joseph Cotten's sweet, wholesome daughter in Orson Welles' superior "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942). She was tapped top replace an ill Teresa Wright in the odd "The North Star" (1943), the Samuel Goldwyn-produced tribute to the USA's Russian allies. Baxter, playing a Ukrainian villager, managed to acquit herself in the proceedings which play more like propaganda than entertainment.

Baxter was seen to far better effect in as the tragic Sophie in the film adaptation of "The Razor's Edge" (1946), for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Stealing the film from stars Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, she expertly conveyed the character's sense of devastation over the death of her husband and baby, as well as the the futility of her life and her struggles to fight her alcoholism. She had rarely had as meaty a role in the past and many of her subsequent ones would pale in comparison. One which didn't, of course, was the tomboyish aspiring actress who insinuates herself into the life of an aging Broadway star in the classic "All About Eve" (1950). Whether subordinating herself to the impetuous Margo Channing (Bette Davis), attempting to seduce director Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) or collapsing under the thumb of the nasty critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), Baxter proved up to the challenge, delivering a layered portrayal of an ambitious woman who would do almost anything to achieve fame. The studio was certain her sweetly conniving Eve Harrington would win her a second Oscar but Baxter maintained hers was as much of a lead as Davis' part and insisted on a Best Actress nomination. Of the 14 Academy Award nominations received by the film, she and David found themselves competing in the Best Actress race, perhaps canceling each other out as Judy Holliday emerged as that year's winner.

Despite her newfound standing as a leading lady, Baxter found good follow-up roles hard to come by, Hitchcock cast her opposite Montgomery Clift as the former girlfriend of a man now a priest on trial for murder in "I Confess" (1953). That same year, she offered a fine turn as a bad girl accused of murder in Fritz Lang's "The Blue Gardenia". Despite her natural charm, there was a perception of her as cool on screen which may have prevented her from landing meaty parts. (A later decision to free-lance her talents perhaps hurt too). Baxter sizzled as Nefretiri, the queen of Egypt married to Ramses (Yul Brynner) but panting after Moses (Charlton Heston), in Cecil B DeMille's remake of "The Ten Commandments" (1956). One critic of the day, however, savaged her "old-school siren histrionics", complaining that she was "out of sync with the spiritual nature of [the film]." Baxter returned to the stage in the late 50s, starring on Broadway in "The Square Root of Wonderful" (1957), "Suite in Two Keys" and "Light Up the Sky" (both 1958). After completing Edward Dmytryk's "Walk on the Wild Side" (1962), she abandoned the screen capitol for several years and moved with her second husband, Randolph Galt, to the Outback of Australia, an experience she later wrote about in "Intermission: A True Story" (1976).

Her remaining feature films were few, but Baxter was a survivor, transferring her energies to the small screen. Having acted in episodic TV as early as 1957, she surfaced as Olga, Queen of the Cossacks, one of the guest criminals on the campy ABC series "Batman". She then starred opposite Henry Fonda in "Stranger on the Run" (NBC, 1967), the first TV-movie for both stars, and received an Emmy nomination for "The Bobby Currier Story" episode of NBC's "The Name of the Game" in 1969. Seen in the two-hour pilot and first season of "Marcus Welby, M.D." (ABC) as Myra Sherwood, the good doctor's love interest, Baxter later made another appearance on the series dying of a rare tropical disease. She was the major domo of the 1976 NBC miniseries "The Moneychangers", played the mother to doomed tennis star "Little Mo" (NBC, 1978) and appeared as Faye in the miniseries remake of "East of Eden" (ABC, 1981).

In a pair of truly ironic career choices, Baxter returned triumphantly to Broadway in the early 70s succeeding Lauren Bacall as Margo Channing in the stage musical "Applause", based on "All About Eve". Nearly ten years later, she was tapped to replace an ailing Bette Davis as the owner of the St. Francis, the titular "Hotel" of the popular ABC anthology series. Baxter remained with the role of Victoria Cabot until her untimely death from a stroke in 1986.

CAST: (feature film)